Geneva artist Christian Gonzenbach presents until December 21 at Galerie C in Neuchâtel familiar objects transformed into intriguing sculptures. The exhibition is called “Wobbly”, an English term evoking wobble, like his works on the verge of tipping over.
At the entrance to Christian Gonzenbach’s “Wobbly” exhibition at Galerie C in Neuchâtel, spectators are greeted by a large sculpture. A basin? A gigantic oyster? An earlobe? It is in truth an enlarged negative print of Christ’s perizonium, the loincloth which would have surrounded Jesus’ pelvis to hide his nudity on the cross. This object becomes a veritable basin in the hands of the artist.
Master of transformation and infinite exploration, Christian Gonzenbach also offers in a dedicated room a kingdom of replicas of engines of all kinds in blood-red ceramic, which resemble organs dripping with enamel. In contrast to this flamboyance, we can also admire funny bronze flowers that are kitsch and at the same time extinct, sad and absurd.
“These flowers are doubly fake since on the one hand they are made of bronze, and on the other hand I did not cast real flowers, but Lego ones. These flowers [en plastique] were reworked, a little hybridized, grafted then cast in bronze, in very earthy tones, like old rusty pots”, explains the artist in the Vertigo show on November 18. The result resembles fields of sunflowers in the end of summer, very beautiful and very sad at the same time “So, we don’t really know how to feel things,” says Christian Gonzenbach.
Masks made from stuffed toys
On another entire wall, we can see an installation of strange animal masks. These are polyester fluff, on which the artist has grown layers of copper by electroplating in vats of acid. By electrolysis, the copper particles attach to the fluff, the interior of which is then removed, leaving only the skins.
Objects are the great passion of the artist, who never ceases to question them by seizing them to extract them from their reality and send them towards other possibilities. “This human story told by objects is fascinating. And I believe that this is what I want to tell too: how, through objects, we create links between us and we create a world that sometimes completely exceeds us “, explains Christian Gonzenbach.
Entitled “Wobbly”, or “wobbly”, “tottering” in French, the exhibition questions the moment “when things lose their balance and cease to be orthogonal. They become interesting, because it is up to us to question ourselves and to reposition ourselves in front of them”, concludes the artist.
Radio subject: Florence Grivel
Adaptation web: Melissa Härtel
Christian Gonzenbach, “Wobbly”, Galerie C, Neuchâtel, from November 14 to December 21, 2024.
Related News :